thought she had it all together, as did her two younger sisters. It was she who usually handed out the advice, happily lecturing her family on matters of budgeting and goal-setting.
She’d had her life totally mapped out ... till last night, when Nicholas had packed his bags and stormed out of their flat, leaving her alone with the person he’d nastily described at length during the previous sixty minutes, that controlling, stingy, boring bitch who’d been ruining his life for the past two years, ruling his every waking moment, smothering his personality and turning him into a spineless, mindless wimp.
He was tired of saving money, tired of eating in and very tired of only having sex in a bed!
He was younger than she was, he’d reminded her scathingly. He wanted some fun before he settled down. Some fun and some space. He didn’t want to get married just yet. He didn’t want the responsibility of a mortgage and kids. He certainly didn’t want to buy a family car. He wanted to drive a Porsche. He wanted to travel. He wanted other women, women who knew that oral was not just a brand of toothbrush!
His dumping on their sex life really stung, because she’d never imagined their love life had been inadequate, or that Nicholas was so discontent in that area. For one thing, he’d always told her he fully understood her distaste for certain forms of foreplay. In fact, he’d claimed to share her feelings on the matter.
‘There’s not a spontaneous sexual bone in your body, Olivia,’ he’d flung at her in parting. ‘You have no idea how to make a man happy. No bloody idea!’
At the time she’d thought he was mad. Now, suddenly, crushingly, she believed him.
‘Olivia? What is it?’ her boss demanded to know.
Valiantly, she fought back the tears.
‘Is it Nicholas?’
All she could do was nod, her eyes dropping lest she lose the battle.
‘Is he ill?’
She shook her head from side to side.
‘Don’t tell me you two have split up!’
Olivia winced at the note of disbelief in his voice. ‘Twenty-four hours ago she would have been just as sceptical over such a thing happening. She’d been so sure they were right for each other; that they’d wanted the same things. Marriage next year. A house the year after that, then their first baby before she turned thirty.
Now, the only thing Olivia could see for herself by thirty was loneliness. It had taken her years of looking to find Nicholas. She was already twenty-seven...
‘Please, Lewis,’ she said, stiffening her shoulders and her quavering bottom lip while she brought up the correspondence file on the computer. ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’
She felt his eyes hard upon her, but simply refused to meet them. She stared straight ahead at the screen and began tapping on the keyboard.
‘Don’t worry too much, Olivia,’ Lewis said. ‘Give him a day or two and he’ll come to his senses. I’ll bet he comes crawling back before the week is out.’
Olivia’s head jerked up, hope flooding her heart.
‘Do you think so?’
‘No sane man would leave a girl like you, Olivia,’ her boss pronounced firmly. ‘Trust me.’
Nicholas did come back the following weekend, but he wasn’t crawling, and he didn’t stay. He merely collected a few personal things he’d left behind—some toiletries and his CD collection. As he strode out the door with hurtful nonchalance, he sarcastically told Olivia she could keep the wonderful furniture they’d been sharing.
From her front window, she watched him drive off in a brand-new black Porsche on which he must have wasted his entire savings, money which was to have been half of the deposit on the perfectly planned home they’d been going to build together, and in which they’d been going to rear their two perfectly planned children.
Olivia was left to weep over the thrift-shop bargains which she’d bought for a song then painstakingly stripped back and painted, thinking she was saving money for their future together. She wept on and off for another week, her depression increased by the closeness of Christmas. People were supposed to be happy at Christmas!
Olivia functioned at work on automatic pilot but wasn’t able to force herself to do much at home, even eat. Lunchtimes were spent wandering aimlessly through Parramatta Mall. She told Lewis she had Christmas shopping to do, but in fact just wanted to get away from his gently probing eyes. Her boss in sympathetic mode was not one she was used to, or comfortable with.
It was testimony to Olivia’s distracted state that her last day at work for the year was suddenly upon her and she hadn’t even bought Lewis a Christmas card, let alone a gift. Guilt consumed her as she picked up the lovely gold-embossed card Lewis had given her, not to mention the huge box of chocolates, which she’d slipped into her bottom drawer for low blood sugar emergencies.
She would have to slip out later and buy him something. She doubted she’d be missed. The entire staff of Altman Industries would be busy celebrating the annual five-week shutdown with a Christmas party to end all company Christmas parties. There would be a marquee set up on the lawn, dancing on the factory floor, food to tempt even the most stringent dieter, beer by the keg and cases of first-class champagne.
It would cost Lewis a fortune, Olivia knew.
But it was a tradition, and he could afford it. Altman Industries might be a relatively small company, but its profits rose every year, even more so after they’d gone international three years ago.
Lewis had started the company in a backyard garage over a decade back. An industrial chemist by training but a naturalist by inclination, he’d combined science and nature to produce a simple range of skin care products for men, starting with a shaving cream and a combination aftershave-lotion-cum moisturiser. A soap swiftly followed, then a shower gel, shampoo and conditioner. Three years back, a hugely successful cologne had been added to the range.
Lewis had been smart enough to employ a good advertising agency from the beginning and they’d come up with the catchy brand name of All Man, a derivation of Lewis’s surname of Altman. Using famous Australian sportsmen to endorse the products had brought instant success.
Lewis had swiftly moved from the limiting garage into a modern factory and office complex site in the centrally located industrial park at Ermington. Expansion had initially meant a huge overdraft at the bank, but it wasn’t long before Altman Industries were back in the black and posting profits that were the envy of its larger competitors.
Next year, Lewis planned to expand production to include an All Woman line. He’d already created the basic skin and hair care range and was now working on the perfume.
Olivia didn’t know all these facts from private conversations with Lewis, although she naturally gleaned some of the information in her position as private secretary to the owner of the company. She’d read a recent article written about him in Good Business magazine which had done a series on successful Sydney companies, and their owners.
She’d also learned that Lewis was thirty-four years old, an only child whose father had died when he was five. He’d been well educated due to his mother’s
